Climato-economic pressures on cultural identity

This chapter explores the relationship between the ambient temperaturesof thermal climate and the under- versus over-representation of severalidentity features—covering both personal attributes and personality characteristics—in populations around the world. To clarify the issue, take the attribute of gender. If men were to be more cold-blooded and less warm-blooded than women, there would be an under-representation of men and an over-representation of women toward the tropical equator. Obviously, and luckily, that is not the case. Now take creativity as an important component of the personality characteristic of openness to experience. As detailed later, the density of Nobel laureates, technological pioneers, and innovativeentrepreneurs increases toward both the North Pole and the South Pole. It seems hard to make sense of this intriguing anomaly without taking into account the spatial severity of cold and hot seasons